


Comfort

by AmandaRex



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 3x13, Angst, F/M, FitzSimmons - Freeform, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, about the change in the team, hopeful, post-Parting Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 14:58:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6333559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmandaRex/pseuds/AmandaRex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fitzsimmons come together to give each other comfort in the wake of the events that ended <i>Parting Shot</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comfort

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for 3x13 Parting Shot.

_When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. -Khalil Gibran_

* * *

He wasn't entirely surprised to hear the knock at his door. Though he'd come back to his quarters to be alone, to lie down on his bunk and stare at the ceiling, he got up and opened the door without a second thought. He knew who he'd find there, her eyes glistening not just with her own sadness, but with concern for him.

"Fitz...I'm sorry. If you'd rather be alone—"

"No, Jemma," he whispered, quietly stopping her before she had to finish the thought, to put into words her fears that they might be better at drowning their sorrows separately. They'd agreed to start over, but that didn't erase this hesitance between them where there had once been certainty. The foregone conclusion that they were always better together than apart didn't always seem true anymore.

"I still can't believe there wasn't another way to get them out of there, where we could have protected them more." She closed her eyes, shaking her head slowly, and he could see how hard she was working to hold back her tears.

"There was another way," Fitz said, sitting heavily on the edge of his bed. "They chose this one to protect S.H.I.E.L.D. To protect _us_."

Jemma started to cry, no longer able to stave it off, and Fitz held up his hand to her, pulling her towards him and urging her to sit. He could see her wavering between decisions as a sob escaped her, and he knew she didn't know what to do. 

Neither of them really knew where they should be, which point in their timeline they should rewind to and try again. Sixteen year old Fitz would have been lost here, unsure what to do or say to her. Sci-Ops Fitz would have pulled her down to sit next to him, listening as they both talked through their sadness, and borrowing a bit of Jemma's optimism to look for the idea that would fix everything. The Fitz who'd come on this adventure with her would have thought nothing of putting a supportive arm around her shoulders, allowing the quiet to settle in around them as they absorbed the difficult lesson yet again that not everything was repairable.

The Fitz he'd been not six months ago, however, would have pulled her into his arms, letting his heart break along with hers as her tears soaked through his shirt to his skin. And the most difficult to reconcile with the rest, the Fitz he wanted to be would lock eyes with her and then kiss the tears away, absorb her sadness as he felt her doing the same for him.

When she couldn't sit next to him, he pulled himself up, standing before her without asking for anything else. His arms ached to hold her, to let their anger at the unfairness of losing their friends dissipate as they took comfort in each other, but he didn't move. 

She looked into his eyes, and he caught the twitching of her hands in his peripheral vision. She was fighting the same conflict with herself, and he wondered if they would both always wage the same internal war, but on separate battlefronts. 

"I'm sad for myself, of course, but I was so worried for you." She was forcing the words out, as though they made her throat burn. "I know we're all in terrible shape. When I consider what Mack must be going through..." She looked down, her forehead wrinkling with pain as she squeezed her eyes shut. "Despite that, Fitz, I find I'm really only concerned about you. They both meant so much to you, and you've had to say goodbye to them forever."

"This wouldn't be the first time I thought I'd never see someone again, only to be proven wrong." He had an image in his mind of a different moment filled with tear-streaked faces, of Jemma taking his head in her hands as she peppered him with desperate kisses. He'd never been as sure of anything in his life to that point that she would be the last thing he'd ever see, that his goodbye to her would be the last time they would ever speak.

That image was replaced with a memory of beating on the monolith with his fists, screaming at it, demanding it return Jemma to him. He remembered how he'd known this was it, that if he faced this featureless, emotionless rock that had stolen her from them and it didn't lead directly to seeing her again, she'd be gone forever.

In both cases, he'd never felt more grateful to be proven wrong, to have had fate subvert him.

Despite herself, she smiled at him a little, the upward tilt of her mouth incongruous between the wet tracks of her tears. "You aren't usually the optimistic one of the two of us."

"I don't know how long it will take, but I know we'll see them again." He hadn't realized he felt that way until he heard the words come out of his mouth, or before he watched Jemma's reaction to them. He never felt more himself than when he was reflected back through Jemma's eyes.

"But Coulson said—"

"I know," he said, stubbornly. "Either they'll need us, or we'll need them. We'll all find each other again. We'll always find our way back to...the people who really need us." 

"Fitz," she whispered, and her arms twitched almost imperceptibly. To anyone else who hadn't been a student of her mannerisms for a decade, it would have gone unnoticed. To Fitz, it was clear what she needed, and that all she lacked was the certainty that it was all right to want it.

"Come here," he said, talking a half step toward her and opening his arms, and she collapsed into him. They molded to each other as she buried her face into his neck, and he could hear her breathing him in as her fingers twisted in the fabric of his shirt.

"At least they still have each other," she said, almost inaudibly, against his chest. 

He wrapped his arms more tightly around her, closing his eyes as he nuzzled into her hair.


End file.
